StreetMusicMap: the world map of street musicians on Instagram

The streets are always a great music venue, but in the rush of daily life we often cross path with talented artists without even noticing them. The StreetMusicMap project came to life to resonate with the music lineup that is made every day in the streets around the globe. The StreetMusicMap Instagramcollab channel already has more than 831 artists and documented on videos in 268 cities of 80 countries all filmed by 639 collaborators and the number is expanding daily!

The first insight came after I, Daniel Bacchieri, saw abandurist (player of the Ukrainian plucked string bandura) playing in the streets of Kiev back in August 2013. It had been only a few weeks after Instagram launched the video caption, so I decided to film him instead of taking a picture. Then I realized it could be a good idea to shoot a 15-second video of street musicians on Instagram.

Designed to be a global lineup of street musicians, StreetMusicMap gained momentum when I moved to São Paulo, right after my trip to Ukraine. The daily pass by Consolação Metro Station in Avenida Paulista — one of the most outstanding sites for street performers in the biggest city in the Americas — was the main stimulus for me to start recording new musicians. My next step was to create an Instagram series called #streetmicrodocs. Then, a great friend of mine called Max Laux (and actually a great friend of Instagrafite’s Marcelo Pimentel as well), gave me a single and important tip: “Why don’t you turn this series into an Instagram account?”. Months later, the project received its current name: StreetMusicMap.

Quickly, the project became a collaborative initiative and the contribution from fans and enthusiasts to be precise who daily magnify the kaleidoscopic mosaic of sounds proposed by StreetMusicMap. We got also the opportunity to curate a street music stage at Festival Path 2015, headlined by the most important buskers from São Paulo.

We are developing an official sitethat integrates video feeds into its Instagram account, which are geolocated on Google Maps. The page aims at expanding the exchange between musicians, fans and music lovers and also become a platform for communication over the vast world of street musicians. The new StreetMusicMap page is being developed by Trinca (run by Roberto da Fonseca and Gustavo Mayer) and designed by Teodoro Marques.

StreetMusicMap is now looking for SXSW 2016, being one of the panel proposals for next year: